Confucian Culture Vs. Dynastic Power in Chinese History

confucian culture vs dynastic power Asia Major (2021) 3d ser. Vol. 34.1: 1-10 ying-shih yü Confucian Culture vs. Dynastic Power in Chinese History PREFACE The personal views in this essay concerning the relationship between culture and power in traditional China are expressed in honor of my friend Hoyt Cleve- land Tillman’s retirement at the end of academic year 2018–19, after forty-three years of distinguished service to Arizona State University. The essay given here served as the keynote to the March 29–30, 2019, conference at Arizona State University to discuss “Culture and Power in China’s History,” an international conference supported, in part, by the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for Interna- tional Exchange. It sets forth an overview of the interactive dynamism of Confu- cian culture and state power, not only as it developed and changed in historical context but also with an analogy to a pair of Siamese twins who require one another for life, yet need to counterbalance one another. KEYWORDS: Mandate of Heaven, Han Wudi, shared governance, Zhu Xi, Ming Taizu, Wang Yangming o begin with, I wish to point out, in the case of China, culture and T power may very well be viewed as a pair of Siamese twins, each one requiring the other in order to live. Let me briefly explain what I mean. According to tradition, in the age of the so-called Three Dynas- ties (sandai 三代) of antiquity (the Xia 夏, Shang 商 and Zhou 周, which were the earliest dynasties in Chinese history), the dynastic power to rule had already been justified in terms of the Mandate of Heaven (tianming 天命). Evidence suggests that by the time of the early Zhou (around the mid-eleventh century bc), if not earlier, the Mandate of Heaven was generally understood in the following way: when Heaven (tian 天) discovered the founder of a dynasty endowed with qualities called “de” Y ü Ying-shih, Dept. East Asian Studies, Princeton University, Emeritus 1 ying-shih yü 德 (usually translated as “virtue”) that predisposed him to such “virtues” as moderation, the inclination to heed good advice, piety in sacrifices to spirits, et cetera, Heaven would give him the mandate to govern and to care for the people. As long as the same “de” could be sustained from generation to generation, Heaven would not take away the dynasty’s mandate to rule. Clearly, the idea of tianming already implies that from the very beginning of Chinese history, dynastic power had been viewed as owing its legitimacy to the support of some specific cultural qualities called de. It is interesting to note how the notion of tianming was later transformed into the Confucian system of culture, such as Confucius’ “rule of virtue” and Mencius’ “benevolent government.” On the other hand, Confucian learning (ruxue 儒學) as a kind of “practical wisdom” (to borrow the term of Aristotle) is concerned not only with knowledge and ideas but also with action, in other words, the positive disposition of humans that are sought and found through practical wisdom must be put into practice. This is perhaps why Con- fucius and Mencius went from state to state trying to persuade the feudal princes to transform the Dao 道 into reality. Thus we see that culture also needed power to authenticate its values. With this historical background in mind, I shall very briefly out- line the relations between dynastic power and Confucian culture under four major dynasties — Han, Tang, Song, and Ming. It is a generally accepted view that China became thoroughly Confucianized under the Han dynasty. Thanks to Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (ca. 179–104 bc), Gongsun Hong 公孫弘 (200–127 bc), and other Confucian scholars, emperor Wu 武帝 (r. 140–87 bc) accepted their pro- posal to establish Confucianism as a state ideology — an ideology that endured until the end of the imperial age in 1911. As a result, only the Confucian classics were taught for the training of government officials in the Imperial Academy (taixue 太學) and in local schools. Moreover, important state policies and institutional arrangements adopted by the imperial court also became based on Confucian principles verifiable in one classical text or another. On the surface, dynastic power and Con- fucian culture seem to have, indeed, worked together harmoniously as well as fruitfully under the Han. However, once we explore the basic attitude of the Han emper- ors toward Confucians and their sacred classics, the above picture of power versus culture would have to be vastly modified. For illustration, let me give three interesting examples. First, Gaozu 高祖 (r. 206–195 bc), the Han founding emperor who came from an uneducated com- 2 confucian culture vs dynastic power moner’s background and had no respect for Confucian scholars; he was famous for washing his feet while receiving a group of them for the first time during his reign. When his trusted adviser Lu Jia 陸賈 (240–170 bc) tried to call his attention to the Odes 詩經 (also called the Classic of Poetry) and the Documents 書經 (or, Classic of History), two of the then Five Classics, the emperor rebuked him with the following comment: “Whatever I possess I gained on horseback; why should I bother with the Odes and Documents?” Second, emperor Xuan 宣帝 (r. 73–49 bc) is described in the His- tory of the Han, or Han shu 漢書 (compiled in the late-first century ad), as oriented to Legalism: “He mainly employed Legalist officials with their multitude of statutes, and he restricted his subjects (i.e., officials as well as the people) according to their ‘activities and names’ 刑名 (a general designation for Legalist governing principles).” Later, when the heir-apparent suggested to him that it might be good to appoint some Confucians to office, he was very upset and responded angrily: “We, the Han dynasty, have our own institutions and laws, combining various elements from hegemonic lords and sage-kings of the past. How could we rely solely upon the rule of virtue or upon Zhou-dynasty governmental ways?” In this case, it is truly remarkable that a Han emperor, only a decade away from emperor Wu’s reign, openly announced that his dynasty was not exclusively Confucian.Our last example comes from emperor Wu himself. As mentioned above, he established Confucian- ism as state ideology under the influence of such Confucian scholars as Dong Zhongshu and Gongsun Hong. The latter was the more important because the whole project was actually carried out through his efforts as chief minister (zaixiang 宰相), the very first Confucian scholar to have been appointed to this most important office in the empire. Let us find out why he became so trusted by emperor Wu. He began his career as a minor local official and did not commence the study of the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu 春秋) and other related classical texts until age forty. As a high-ranking official under emperor Wu, according to his Han shu biography, “he became skilled in writing, the laws, and bureaucratic affairs, and above all, he further adorned it all with a semblance of Confucian ways.” Thus, his perfor- mance greatly delighted emperor Wu. Other accounts (in both Shiji 史記 and Han shu) even further specify that what emperor Wu particularly liked about him was his ingenuity in adorning laws and bureaucratic affairs with Confucian learning. I wish to call the reader’s attention to the “adornment” business; the original expression was “adorned by means of Ru, or Confucian, teaching 緣飾以儒術.” This “adornment” usually 3 ying-shih yü took the form of buttressing a Legalistic decision or judgment in important cases with citations from a Confucian text, such as the Spring and Autumn Annals. The implication was quite obvious: a Confucian sage in the past would have approved the specific Han imperial decision, or judgment. Moreover, emperor Wu’s trust of Dong Zhongshu was also related to “adornment.” Han shu has the following overview: Emperor Wu considered Dong Zhongshu, Gongsun Hong, and Ni Kuan 倪寬 (d. 103 bc) to be the three most important officials in the whole empire because all of them were Confucians well-versed in worldly affairs, fully acquainted with laws and, at the same time, effectively accomplished in adorning governmental matters with classical learning. With the evidence shown above, it seems beyond reasonable doubt to suggest that emperor Wu’s choice of Confucianism as state ideology was not made on account of its intrinsic value as a belief system, but because of the decorative functions of language in its classical texts. Next, we turn to the Tang dynasty. In the past, people usually spoke of a “Confucian revival” during the Sui-Tang reunification. Modern scholarship has conclusively shown that this is an overstatement. Dur- ing the age of disunity, roughly from the third to the end of the sixth century, neo-Daoist discourse and Buddhist speculation converged to form the mainstream of thought. By contrast, Confucian classical exege- sis remained in a stereotyped and lifeless state. This situation continued well into the Tang period. The mid-seventh century ad compilation of Confucian canonical texts with detailed subcommentaries, titled Wujing zhengyi 五經正義, was, of course, a great contribution to classical scholarship. However, it was only one among several large-scale historical and literary projects produced simply for educational purposes in the early Tang: it did not lead to a new stage of Confucian development. As a matter of fact, it was two centuries after the Sui-Tang unification that Han Yu 韓愈 (768–824 ad) began to impact the world of literati writers and thinkers, thus bringing on a Confucian breakthrough; however, that was too late to have any bearing on Tang dynastic power.

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